


Ephemeral

by whiskeyandspite



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood, Exhibitionism, M/M, Masturbation, Nostalgia, Painting, Teasing, Voyeurism, pre transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: He was ephemeral, this way, as true beauty often is.

  He could be eternal…
Marius decides to paint beauty tarnished, using his favorite boy as his muse.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aquielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquielle/gifts).



> Am I gonna get in trouble? Lord only knows.
> 
> But I got to write my literal gateway M/M pairing for one of my favorite people in the world and I am happy XD

They hadn’t meant to - the boys knew well enough how displeased Marius got upon seeing his charges injured and marred - but the fact remained that the cut would not stop bleeding. Riccardo had gone for a cool cloth, pressing it to Amadeo’s face and laughing with his friend as they tried to stem the flow. They had been running in the garden, enjoying an evening of lazy play away from lessons; they truly had not meant to disobey so.

But it happened, on occasion.

Amadeo had not infrequently begged his friend’s help in such matters. Both understood why.

Riccardo guided his friend to sit, and took the bloodied cloth away to replace it with another. Amadeo watched him go, head cocked and curls tickling the tops of his shoulders. He was a handsome boy, a loyal and beautiful boy, and Amadeo loved him dearly. When he had still slept with the other boys, tangled like puppies in the enormous bed, he had slept closest to Riccardo.

Perhaps, if he was good, when he was, he would ask the master to allow Riccardo to share the bed with them one night. Perhaps more than one. Perhaps -

“Amadeo.”

The word caressed him like silk, some days, like velvet others. Spoken by his master, his given name felt like worship, even when he was being chastened. He turned to gaze over his shoulder, lips parted, the lower dark with blood where the cut had opened.

“I fell,” he managed softly, folding his upper lip over the lower and smearing blood against his skin when he opened his mouth once more. “When we played, I misstepped and I fell, and caught the corner of a flower pot as I did.”

Marius considered him and said nothing, his robes wrapped comfortably around him, his hands folded beneath. His hair fell loose, today, as it often did when he painted, or when he retired to their room to read. It was getting late, Amadeo realized, and he searched his face for any sign of displeasure, for any sign of anything at all, and found only a brief narrowing of light eyes as his answer.

For moments more, there was no sound around them but the wind through the trees and the city beyond their enormous home. When the master finally spoke, it was simply to bid Amadeo to come with him, before turning to lead the way, so Amadeo did.

The Palazzo had its own heartbeat, its own energy within that the boys, and even their master, fell under when they entered. It was quiet, always open, air breezing through over beautiful marble floors. Amadeo loved it. He loved the freedom it gave, while still protecting those within it, it was a home but not a cage. It reminded him of something he couldn’t quite grasp, something he was certain he should remember but couldn’t no matter how hard he tried.

He thought of fields, lying on the reclining couches and overlooking the city. He thought of steady streams and long grasses.

Now, following Marius through the hallways on light feet, he thought only of the warmth of his master’s lips against his face, he thought of the things he would whisper to him as he spread Amadeo’s legs and slipped his hands between them. He bit his lip and winced at the slight tug of pain, bringing a hand to it to catch another drop of blood that oozed free.

“Do not,” came a quiet command, and so Amadeo lowered his hand with a smile, and hurried after his master.

They went to the studio, already set up with a canvas on its stand, several more nearby, the gesso still drying on them. Amadeo could see already the shadowy charcoal markings on a page, the ghost of what would become his master’s next painting, lying by one of the candles, the warmth curling its corners. Perhaps he would be asked to prepare some paints for him, run to gather water, or rub aromatic oil into the fine hairs of the brushes, if he was finished with them.

“Come here, Amadeo, into the light.”

Marius’ hair was gold in it, pure gold. Amadeo could barely keep his eyes off of him, lips parting despite himself. He stepped up to where he had been directed, lifted his chin obediently as his master set a hand beneath it to hold it up. The blood had not yet dried upon it, nor on his lips, though the pain no longer stung him as it had at the moment of impact. It reflected the warmth of the candle.

“Do you know what beauty is, Amadeo?” He asked him, turning the boy’s head gently one way and then the other. He met his charge’s eyes for a moment, taking his answer from the flicker of eyelids. “Artificial beauty is common, real beauty is rare. Beauty is most prominent in vulnerability, in places people rarely choose to look. The first unfurling petals of a flower. The gasp caught on soft lips,”

Obediently, Amadeo drew a breath.

“Beauty comes in the loss of control - because true beauty cannot be controlled. It cannot be tamed.” Marius leaned nearer, rubbing his nose gently against Amadeo’s until the boy trembled in pleasure and closed his eyes. “You will sit for me.”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.”

A pale thumb drew through the drying blood on Amadeo’s skin and smeared it; down his perfect chin, and against his jaw. When Marius let him go, the boy went immediately to get a stool to sit on, setting it beside the candles on the table near his master. He had sat for Marius before, the model for him to practice on. He had lain for him, half awake and blissed out in pleasure, as Marius sketched him tangled in the sheets.

“How shall I look, Master?” He asked, pressing his toes to the floor to hoist himself up to the seat. Marius considered him, bringing nearer the easel and reaching for a new canvas.

“How you look when I wake you in the morning, my mouth between your thighs,” he replied. “When your voice breaks softly on the first sound you make of the day, “

Amadeo sighed, settling his hands between his legs now, and squirming pleasantly at the thought. Sitting for his master was a lengthy affair; often he wouldn’t be allowed to move for hours at a time, just so the master could get the exact inflection of one color or another, just so he could concentrate on the way Amadeo’s brows furrowed or the gentle flaring of his nostrils as he breathed.

Here, Marius needed him to be angelic, to be vulnerable and innocent. He needed him to be beautiful as only the pleasure of his body could make him. With his own blood smeared against him, Amadeo needed to be beauty tarnished, for his master to capture that forever in oils.

By his hand, the boy would be immortal.

Amadeo moved to adjust his position, turning his face to the candles, allowing for light to fall across his skin better, and startled when Marius told him to stop.

“Don’t pose,” he said. “Adjust nothing. I want you as you are.”

Amadeo nodded, returning to his relaxed pose, hands in his lap, one foot pressing to the ground as the other curled around the leg of the stool he sat upon. His tunic that draped higher over one thigh than the other, was starting to slide off one shoulder, and Amadeo resisted adjusting it to lay properly. Marius wanted him like this, just like this.

Marius wanted his beauty.

Without a word, Amadeo curled the fingers of one hand against the warm cotton, drawing it further up his leg, revealing more pale skin as his master took up the charcoal to begin sketching his outline. He would start with the face, he always did. The tiny motions Amadeo made against the rest of his body wouldn’t impact the way he sat for his master to capture his likeness.

He thought of that very morning, being woken with deliberate nuzzling, with his thighs being spread by familiar, large hands… Amadeo made a sound, soft, and met Marius’ eyes when the master looked at him over the top of the canvas.

Marius wanted openness. 

Marius wanted vulnerability.

Marius wanted Amadeo at his most genuine.

The boy slipped one hand beneath the hem of his tunic and turned his palm against his cock in a deliberate rub, letting his lips part in pleasure as the first tantalizing shivers began to cascade down his back.

This was his most honest, his most true. Without a memory of his past, all Amadeo had was his life here, all he had were the moments between the dark flickers of memory and those moments were his master. His first memories of him were of pleasure, being bathed and touched and carefully kept. His last memory, for now, was of his master’s light eyes flicking up to trace Amadeo’s jaw to properly capture it in sketch, recreating the smudge of blood there with a smear of his thumb against the canvas.

Amadeo’s toes spread against the tile and curled again as he sighed, and he relished the longer look Marius gave him for it.

“Am I beautiful?” He asked softly, drawing the heel of his hand down against the thick vein of his cock, to the curls of hair at the base of it.

“When you listen,” Marius replied, a flicker of a smile suggesting the teasing behind the words. “When you hardly try to be.”

“Am I beautiful now?”

Marius set the charcoal to the canvas but raised his eyes from it, letting them meet Amadeo’s as the boy continued to stroke himself. He watched the way blood rushed to his cheeks, heating them. He watched the way Amadeo’s beautiful dark eyes darkened further with his desire for this, wanton and youthful and wonderful. He watched the way he sat so still, being so good, while becoming just what Marius needed him to be.

“Ravishing,” he whispered, and found his moment, right there, right then, when Amadeo’s brows furrowed and his lips parted and his chin raised in full submission. He ghosted the expression to his page, smudging aside the one he’d drawn before, and lifted his eyes to his boy again.

“Exquisite,” he continued. “Obedient, untamed to anything but my hand.”

“Yes,” Amadeo let himself shiver entirely, from shoulders to toes, the tremble unsettling the tunic off his shoulder. “I would belong to no one else.”

“And you shall not.”

“I shall not,” Amadeo vowed, allowing his pulse to hitch, his breath to catch in his throat as he held himself still for his master to draw. When he moved again, Marius did not chasten him. “Never, in this life or another.”

His master leveled him with a look but said nothing at all, watching Amadeo work himself closer and closer to his sweet completion. His blush had crawled lower, now, past the blood on his jaw, over his throat and hammering pulse. His skin broke out in goosebumps that appeared and vanished, over and over, as Amadeo’s body pitched so freely into pleasure.

“Look at me,” he murmured, watching the beautiful boy immediately obey; eyes bright and half open. He watched orgasm finally overcome Amadeo, pulling sounds and shudders and sweet breath from wet lips.

He was ephemeral, this way, as true beauty often is.

He could be eternal…

“Remarkable creature,” Marius praised him, licking his pale bottom lip between sharp teeth as he watched Amadeo come down from the arousal. The boy would be entirely pliant, now, soft as a doll, warm and gentle as a kitten. He was a treasure, a miracle pulled from the filth of a Turkish bathhouse. Absolutely extraordinary.

Marius stepped around his easel and nearer his charge, drawing charcoal-stained fingers through his hair and pulling Amadeo to rest against his chest. He praised him, whispered that he had never been more proud, nor more in awe of another human being as he was of him. The boy shivered, squirmed in pleasure, brought sticky fingers to his lips to suck them clean as dark eyes sought his master’s.

Wanton, ravishing, youthful and alive - so entirely alive he radiated with it.

Marius bent to draw his tongue against the dried blood on his boy’s face, kissing him deeply to feed him the taste of his own life, taking in return the taste of Amadeo’s pleasure from his tongue.

Perhaps -

Perhaps. But not tonight. Tonight he would have the boy curled and sleeping in the studio as he painted the vision before him. Tonight he would carry Amadeo to bed when the night turned to early morning and he would worship him. Tonight he would remain ephemeral, just a while longer.


End file.
